Current spike in Covid cases only local, can't be termed as 4th wave: ICMR

New Delhi, May 02: Amid the rising cases of Covid-19 and fears of pandemic's fourth wave, Samiran Panda, Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) today said the recent rise in COVID-19 cases can not be described as the fourth wave of the pandemic.

Additional Director General in ICMR, Samiran Panda while speakking to AIR said the recent data shows surges of cases are at district level which can not be extrapolated to the entire state and at a national level. He said this is called a blip which is confined to certain geographical regions.

Some regions of the country have registered spikes in Covid positivity rates.

Panda gave four reasons in favour of the statement. He said that first of all, the surge has been found at some local levels which is due to the testing ratio.

"Secondly, what we see is just a blip and we cannot say that entire states are under the grip of Covid." Thirdly, there is no increase in the hospital admission across the country, he noted. And most importantly, according to Panda, no new variant has been found yet which indicates that there is no fourth wave right now.

While talking about the positivity rate, ICMR said that sometimes the rate goes up because of low testing.